


Integrate

by Phlyarologist



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 08:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16081877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phlyarologist/pseuds/Phlyarologist
Summary: Can it really be this easy?





	Integrate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



Suddenly life is good. Suddenly life has always been good.

He's spent these five years waiting to die; he's spent these five years with his family. He can remember both. "When did you learn to paint like that?" Alma asks him, and a wave of mnestic double vision cuts the legs from under him and he has to sit down.

This is his wife of many years. She has been alive for all of them. Some days it still feels brand-new. This is their daughter. He's been there for every sunny minute of her childhood. This is the family cat, ten years dead, bashing into Jowd's hands demanding to be shown the laser pointer again.

“You know, Cabanela loves you,” she says, another time. It's evening, and they're preparing for a dinner party. Lynne has cracked her first case, and while he is legitimately proud of her he's also found himself willing to seize any pretext to get the whole gang back in one room, all of them bound together by a night that, five months ago, didn't happen.

Jowd is frowning at a disassembled vacuum cleaner. The hose is blocked off by two dust-covered toy mice – he has to get them out of there before he can finish cleaning the dining room. Sissel is conspicuously absent. “I'll talk to him,” Jowd says at last. “If you'd prefer I spend less time with him off the clock -”

“You don't sound surprised at all,” says Alma. She gives him a playful smack on the chest. “Do you just like the attention?”

It's not that – although, no, he's not surprised. He realized it not long before his death in one of his two pasts. He didn't think to apply that knowledge to the other, or to the present, but it makes sense.

He regards his wife seriously. She and Kamila will always come first. “So how do we want to handle this?”

“How do _you_ want to handle it, dear?”

An hour or so later, Cabanela saunters in, and Jowd watches him. He's making some weird bow to Alma and presenting a bottle of wine. He's outside the prison holding Jowd at gunpoint, his eyes glinting. He's thanking Alma and Jowd for their efforts in “co-parenting our baby.” He's a broken heap on the floor of Pigeon Man's office, smiling wryly, blood in his mouth.

To say “this man would die for you” isn't emphatic enough. It hasn't happened in this lifetime, but Jowd remembers it all the same.

Alma takes the wine away to chill, and then it's just them. Jowd doesn't know how to begin. That's funny, isn't it? At his age, and with such an old friend, to feel the fumbling uncertainty of wanting to ask a girl to prom? Heck, maybe he should just say that – “Cabanela, will you go to prom with me?” Good for a laugh, if nothing else.

“I take it our baby's running a little late, huh?” says Cabanela.

For a second Jowd thinks, Maybe Sissel had to rescue her from another falling object – but no, that's not this life. And Sissel is right here, anyway, thinking about smudging some black fur onto Cabanela's nice white coat (Jowd gives him a look honed by ten years of cat ownership. Sissel desists).

“Maybe someone should give her a watch,” says Jowd. In another timeline, this would be an inside joke.

“Greeeat idea. Love it. Hey, why didn't you give her a toy watch instead of a badge back then? Then she'd be motivated to be on time.”

“I'll bear that in mind if I ever get to do it again. Instead of saying I'm a detective, I'll tell her I'm punctual.”

“That's the ticket, baby.”

Kamila's footsteps can be heard descending the stairs. Alma leaves the kitchen and heads into the dining room. Cabanela ambles - or is that more of a "prance"? - in the same direction, until Jowd says, "Hold on."

"Yeees?"

"Cabanela... I'm grateful for all you've done."

"What, watching out for Lynne? Any tiiime. The kid's got chops. She's goin' places."

"That's part of it."

Cabanela cocks his head. He could always sense a secret. In this lifetime he hasn't been tested as hard, but he's the same man. The one who labored for five years in secrecy to exonerate someone who refused his help. That wily old so-and-so. "And the rest of it is...?"

Jowd smiles, shrugging helplessly. "The rest of it is very hard to explain."

"Try me sometime."

Jowd has a thought. "Next Thursday night? Chicken Kitchen?"

"It's a date, baby."

"Sure is. Wear something nice."

A beat. "Wait -"

It's rare to catch this guy flat-footed. But then, Jowd isn't exactly playing fair. No one normal lifetime would have given him this level of insight. There's another knock on the door, and Lynne's voice rings out, and Jowd wraps an arm around the still startled Cabanela's shoulders and steers him toward the party. "Then we'll see how it goes."

And it's that easy. And this is his life now. He's earned none of it.

In the entryway Missile is bouncing around as if spring-loaded. Sissel weaves excitedly between Lynne's boots. Jowd's daughter and his protege are laughing and talking about some new record by some band he's never heard of. Alma watches, smiling. 

Cabanela shoots Alma a questioning glance, and she shoots _something_ back, and he relaxes and drapes a reciprocal arm over Jowd. “You've got a good thing going, my friend.”

He hasn't earned it, but he's here.

**Author's Note:**

> Every time Sissel does something annoying in this story represents a time my cat interrupted me writing it.


End file.
